A noteworthy trend in the medical community is the move away from performing surgery via traditional “open” techniques in favor of minimally invasive or minimal access techniques. Open surgical techniques are generally undesirable in that they typically require large incisions and high amounts of tissue displacement to gain access to the surgical target site, which produces concomitantly high amounts of pain, lengthened hospitalization (increasing health care costs), and high morbidity in the patient population. Less-invasive surgical techniques (including so-called “minimal access” and “minimally invasive” techniques) are gaining favor due to the fact that they involve accessing the surgical target site via incisions of substantially smaller size with greatly reduced tissue displacement requirements. This, in turn, reduces the pain, morbidity and cost associated with such procedures. While minimally invasive techniques have been developed and well utilized for many spinal procedures, corpectomies (removal of at least part of one or more vertebral bodies) often performed to treat tumors and fractures of the spine, particularly thoracic corpectomies, are still highly invasive procedures. The thoracotomy incision, commonly referred to as a “shark bite”, generally utilized for accessing the thoracic spine is extremely painful and can lead to complications and a very difficult recovery period. Additionally, the anatomy of the thoracic region and the delicate structures found in the region often necessitate that an additional surgeon, such as a vascular surgeon, assist the spinal surgeon in performing the corpectomy, adding both time and cost to the surgical procedure.
The present invention is directed towards addressing these challenges.